


Fear of the Dark

by persephoneregina



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Angst, Character Death, Dark, Gen, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, Horror, Mild Gore, Nightmares, Possession, Psychological Horror, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:47:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25590829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephoneregina/pseuds/persephoneregina
Summary: “I sense...fear…” The guttural murmur whispered in Yunho’s mind, Hongjoong figured, and fuck, it was right.To define what he was feeling as fear would have been an underestimation.Hongjoong found himself being the helpless, powerless spectator of an event he couldn’t intervene in and, if possible, that terrorized him even more.He wanted to wake up.He wanted it to end.He wanted a way out.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Fear of the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work Zaly commissioned me a while ago and that only now I managed to polish and actually finish...  
> Forever sorry for the huge delay babe! I hope you will like it and that it will live up to your expectations.  
> I have always wanted to go a lot darker than I usually do with my fics and this was such an excellent occasion to try my skills in this sense!  
> I hope I succeeded in giving you that shiver down your spine....And in case I did, please leave kudos and/or a comment down below.
> 
> I'll see you -very soon!

Hongjoong had been having nightmares for years.

For as long as he could have remembered, actually.

It was nothing new to him: a good night’s sleep was not a concept he had ever been familiar with, that he could remember, and even though he had attempted several remedies of very different natures, nothing had ever worked.

There seemed to be something, in his mind, that came to life, that surged to conscience and took control as soon as Hongjoong fell asleep, making him toss and turn by projecting horrendous scenarios of unspeakable anguish which he very rarely happened to be able to remembered, but that, somehow, still seemed to leave him scarred for days to come afterwards, so much that he had become terrified of nighttime and looked for every possible method to drain himself in order to fall in an almost senseless sleep.

That night made no exception.

Hongjoong walked towards his bed, head dizzy and steps uncertain, messily flopping on the duvet as he grabbed the feather pillow close, but not managing quite well to place his head on it. Didn’t matter. His lids were already way too heavy and his limbs numb and unresponsive for him to care about comfort. The midnight breeze filtering from his window lulled him in deep sleep before he knew and, when he opened his eyes, Hongjoong figured he was not in his own body anymore.

Hongjoong looked around himself, seeking for a hint as to where he was or who he was, for that matter, his heart already racing in his chest, while a growing sense of discomfort took over him like a paralysis, impeding him from walking away before he understood what was going on.

For as much as he tried to understand his location, the most he managed to make out of that was that he found himself in a dark alley, at the back of a club or something, judging from the pounding music he could hear in the background and the loud clamor of voices screaming inside the building to his left.

The place smelled awful.

A sudden whiff of piss and rotting waste turned his stomach upside down, making him -well, whoever he was- nauseous.

“ _ Please don’t throw up, please don’t throw up, please don’t throw up _ …” Hongjoong begged in his mind, but he had to give up on his prayers soon enough when he figured that his host vomiting was definitely not the worst case scenario his mind had in store for him.

That, though, Hongjoong didn’t know yet.

The body he was in was considerably taller than his own, hads longer and wider, overall sensibly stronger than what Hongjoong was used to feel in his own skin, though his head felt dizzy and his vision unclear.

Acting out of pure instinct, he checked something weighing inside the pocket of his jeans: a pair of keys, seemingly the ones of an apartment. Attached to it, a keychain made of small, colourful beads. Hongjoong tried to focus on it through the eyes of the stranger and read, in English characters, the name YUNHO.

“ _ Well, hello, Yunho _ .” Hongjoong thought “ _ Sorry to be here _ .”

He was accustomed to weird dreams, but dreaming about being in someone else’s body was definitely out of the ordinary, even for him.

If Hongjoong hadn’t known that his dreams were very seldom meaningless, he surely would have laughed at the overall absurd and nearly ludicrous situation his psyche had crafted for him, hat night, but there was a feeling, completely irrational and yet extremely persistent, that disturbed him, deep down, and that made him feel like he couldn’t lower his defenses just yet.

And rightfully so.

All of a sudden, the loud music and the voices went silent.

Hongjoong felt his host, Yunho, turn his head around, but as soon as he tried to look at his back, a deafening hiss resonated in his mind and forced him to curl up on himself, sitting on his heels, palms pressed on his ears, trying to mitigate the impact of that sound.

But that was of no help.

Soon enough, Hongjoong was aware that the sound didn’t come from the outside.

_ It was inside _ .

Hongjoong powerlessly felt how Yunho was crying, begging and screaming, as he crawled, on all fours, trying to escape that torture.

He had only made a few centimeters, when the lights of the lampposts started to flicker convulsively and the hiss slowly turned into a lower, deeper, guttural sound, something between a growl and a murmur.

Yunho’s heart started to race in his chest, beating so fast that Hongjoong could feel it in his throat, but the very moment he miserably tried to get up and stand on his feet, something coming from the darkness at his back, something thick, strong and icky, like a solidified shadow dripping black ichor, wrapped itself around Yunho’s ankle and yanked him down with a single, powerful tugging.

“ _ I sense...fear… _ ” The guttural murmur whispered in Yunho’s mind, Hongjoong figured, and fuck it was right. 

To define what he was feeling as fear would have been an underestimation.

Hongjoong found himself being the helpless, powerless spectator of an event he couldn’t intervene in and, if possible, that terrorized him even more.

He wanted to wake up. 

He wanted it to end. 

He wanted a way out, probably just as much as Yunho did, but his thoughts were instantly interrupted by the inconfundible, sinister, muffled sound of bones creaking under the relentless grip of the shadow tentacle around Yunho’s ankle.

Then, a stab of pain tore his body apart, like an arrow.

“ _ All alone… _ ”

Tears kept streaming down Yunho’s face, as he whispered something that sounded like a “Please, please...No… Please don’t…”, but that Hongjoong couldn’t really pick up, terrified as he was by what was going on and wishing, imploring his own mind, like never before, to not be forced to see whatever was about to happen.

In spite of that, though, his twisted psyche did not accord him that kind of courtesy.

Yunho tried to push himself up, with every single grain of strength he had, hands pressing on the filthy asphalt of the dark alley, but the moment he surged forward with his torso, another shadow emerged from the darkness and tightened its grasp around his chest, crushing his ribcage and leaving Yunho gasping for air.

Again, the creaking sound of bones being broken and the annihilating pain deriving from the clench around his chest made his mind go blank with an inhuman suffering he never thought could have even been possible for a human being to experience.

“ _ Do not… Resist… Yunho. No help. No way out. No Escape. _ ”

After that, Yunho let himself fall on the ground, giving up the fight as he acknowledged he wouldn’t have stood a chance, anyway.

Whatever it was that had attacked him, it wasn’t going to let him leave on his feet.

Hongjoong noticed Yunho’s eyesight getting blurry and something warm and lumpy filling up his throat. He tried to spit out, he tried not to choke, while his crying turned into a feeble sighing and he succumbed.

Another shadow tentacle reached for Yunho’s neck and, in a sadistically slow crawling, covered his mouth, sealing it once and for all.

Yunho closed his eyes.

Everything became silent.

Everything became dark.

And yet, the dream didn’t seem to be over yet.

Hongjoong tried to remind himself that he could breathe, that he was alive, that all he had been witnessing had only been a twisted trick of his mind, it had only been one of his nightmares.

As he was slowly rising back to conscience, like one swims towards the light after an immersion in the abyss, Hongjoong felt that guttural voice echoing in his ears.

  
“ _ Greetings, Hongjoong. Are you afraid of the dark? _ ”


End file.
